each Sunday evening together in Kennington; Julian had no room in
which he could well receive visitors. The next Sunday proved fine;
Julian planned to take Harriet for a walk in the afternoon, then,
after accompanying her home, to proceed to Walcot Square. As was
usual on these occasions, he was to meet his cousin at the Holborn
end of Gray's Inn Road, and, as also was the rule, Harriet came some
twenty minutes late. Julian was scrupulously punctual, and waiting
irritated him not a little, but he never allowed himself to show his
annoyance. There was always the same kind smile on his handsome
face, and the pressure of his hand was warm.

Harriet Smales was about a year younger than her cousin. Her dress
showed moderately good taste, with the usual fault of a desire to
imitate an elegance which she could not in reality afford. She wore
a black jacket, fur-trimmed, over a light grey dress; her black
straw hat had a few flowers in front. Her figure was good and her
movements graceful; she was nearly as tall as Julian. Her face,
however, could not be called attractive; it was hollow and of a
sickly hue, even the lips scarcely red. Grey eyes, beneath which
were dark circles, looked about with a quick, suspicious glance; the
eye-brows made almost a straight line. The nose was of a coarse
type, the lips heavy and indicative of ill-temper. The disagreeable
effect of these lineaments was heightened by a long scar over her
right temple; she evidently did her best to conceal it by letting
her hair come forward very much on each side, an arrangement in
itself unsuited to her countenance.

"I think I'm going to leave my place," was her first remark to-day,
as they turned to walk westward. She spoke in a dogged way with
which Julian was familiar enough, holding her eyes down, and, as she